The Daily Manchester American

The prospect of a good harvest in this section is beginning to be entertained. If after these rains there shall be a change of weather soon, as there is some prospect now, the corn and potatoes may start forth and yet do well. The months of July and August have more to do with these crops than the earlier months of May and June, and if we can have a hot sun and warm showers during those months our farmers need not despair. The grass and wheat look well, and bid fair for great crops.

Our pursuits in New England have materially changed of late years; we raise so little for the sustenance of life and consume so much; nay we become so entirely a section of shop keepers and artisans, that we must needs watch with keenest scrutiny the development of the seasons in their influence upon the crops. But a few years since and no attention was devoted to such questions in this country anywhere. But the Irish famine and the European dearth, by their absolute exhaustion of our capacity to meet any demand not utterly unlimited compelled even those whose lot is cast in this favored land to contemplate with affrighted gaze the spectre of possible want. For, with flour at thirteen dollars per barrel, many families were constrained to exceed their available means or else to restrain the natural craving for bread. Had not Providence smiled upon the country, and once more blessed it with a bountiful harvest, it is certain that even in America there would have been realized many of those sad scenes of destitution so familiar in the pages of history.

When therefore a concurrent report came up, at the opening of spring, from all parts of the country, stating the destruction of the young wheat by the intense cold of winter, a fear came over the hearts of men who listened to these ill-omened bodings. There had been a hope of a revival of activity in business. Men, who have been idle for a year past, are looking forward to the commencement of that gradual improvement in trade and manufactures anticipated as the result of the new Tariff. Western speculation has undoubtedly had something to do in bringing about the hard times; it has absorbed eastern capital until investment in western land at the rate of ten dollars per acre in unbroken and wild territory has been the rule rather than the exception. Every farmer in the Northwest has added to his overgrown estate. But if, as indicated by our western contemporaries, seed time and harvest there, as well as with us, are yet to fulfil the divine promise, we will wait with perfect trust a resuscitation of our industrial interests and pursuits in New England, which will surely follow.